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For generations, historians have struggled with the idea called the “Great Divergence”: meaning, how and why did northwestern Europe and later the United States burst forth in an explosion of industrial growth while much of the world lagged behind (Kenneth Pomeranz, The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy, 2000). Pomeranz pointed to two key dissimilarities: access to coal, and access to vast resources on the American continent cultivated largely through coerced and slave labor. Moreover, since the end of the Civil War, historians have been too eager to make slavery a “southern problem,” This conveniently exculpates the north from its role in the development of slavery. Sven Beckert and Seth Rockman bring these ideas to the forefront. They question the notion that northern industry and the development of slavery in the south were rival developments. Rather they show that American history looks very different once we invite the possibility that these two transformations are deeply embedded within one another. Beckert and Rockman invite seventeen scholars to explore this connection.
The chapter that interested me the most was “’What have we to do with slavery?’ New Englanders and the Slave Economics of the West Indies.” Eric Kimball explores not the relationship between the north and the south, but the earlier relationship between the north and the West Indies market. At the beginning of the chapter, Kimball cites a quote from Fredrick Douglass, “The people of the North had been accustomed to ask, in tone of cruel indifference, ‘What have we to do with slavery?’” (page 181) This got me to think of an idea the of “American exceptionalism” (The School of the Americas: Military Training and Political Violence in the Americas, Lesley Gill, 2004). Gill talks about how Americans see themselves as incapable of wrong doing. In her example, she explains how Americans turned a blind eye to their brand of imperialism in the mid-twentieth century. Here is a short quote to explain what Gill is talking about, “. . . imperialism has always been inconsequential to U.S. history; that, unlike the great powers of Europe, the historical experience of the United States has been characterized by ‘discovery’ not ‘imperium,’ ‘global power’ not ‘imperialism,’ ‘unipolarity’ not ‘hegemony’ is to perpetuate false notions of ‘American exceptionalism’”(Gill, page 4). This links to how northerners saw slavery, they never thought they had anything to do with that institution.
I am in agreement with Morgan in that this “text successfully looks at the many different ways slavery bolstered the United States market economy and pushed America into being an industrialized nation.” However, I would take this text as a beginning text for those who are interested in the subject. Both Beckert and Rockman have written much on the connection between slavery and capitalism. This text offers a wide variety of views but remains less in depth than other texts in the field.